AUBURNDALE, Fla. – The Slippery Rock University baseball team combined effective pitching with another above-average hitting performance to defeat West Chester University, 11-9, Thursday afternoon at the Lake Myrtle Sports Complex.
Slippery Rock has now won three out of its last five games to improve its record to 5-12 overall. West Chester drops to 8-3 on the season with the loss. Two of the Rams' three defeats on the year have come against Slippery Rock.
As was the case in The Rock's win against West Chester on March 9, all nine Rock position players recorded at least one hit. SRU finished the nine-inning contest with 18 hits.
The combination of
Tyler Walters and
Alex Bell and continued to hit virtually anything that came their way from the middle of The Rock's batting order. Walters went 2-for-4 with two runs scored, three RBI and one home run while Bell was 4-for-5 with one run, two RBI and two doubles. Walters' homer was his sixth of the season and 19th of his career, the seventh most in Rock history.
Leadoff hitter
Ty Zimmerman,
Christian Porterfield,
Frankie Jezioro,
Carson Kessler and
Mitchell Wood all had two-hit games as well with
Preston Falascino and
Joe Campagna rounding out Slippery Rock's lineup with one hit apiece. Wood and Jezioro both registered triples for SRU's first two-triple game of the year.
Matt Gordon got the start on the mound for SRU. He allowed eight runs, but only two of the scores were earned runs as SRU fielding miscues resulted six unearned runs for the Rams. In four games this season, Gordon is 2-1 with a 3.26 ERA.
Relief pitcher
Stephen McKee came on for Gordon in the seventh inning and after allowing a leadoff home run was virtually unhittable the rest of the way en route to his first save of the year.
West Chester scored first via a Nick Ward solo home run in the opening inning, but SRU countered with three runs in the second with back-to-back-to-back run scoring extra-base hits from Campagna, Wood and Zimmerman.
The Rams answered back with four wins over the second and third innings to pull ahead 5-3, but Slippery Rock would come back with a four-run fourth inning to take a lead it would never relinquish. The inning was highlighted by an RBI-single from Falascino and Walters' three-run homer to left field.
SRU added four more runs in the sixth thanks to a two-run double by Bell, a Porterfield RBI-single and a run-scoring triple by Jezioro.
West Chester managed to make the game interesting with three runs in the sixth and one more in the seventh in addition to placing two runners on base in the eighth, but McKee ended the threat by forcing a fly out before proceeding to force three consecutive outs in the ninth to close out the contest.
Thursday's game gives The Rock a 2-2 season series split against the Rams.
Dalton Reed took the loss for West Chester after giving up six runs on nine hits in 3.2 innings. Reed had not allowed a run in his first 14 innings of the season prior to Thursday's outing.
Slippery Rock continues its time at the RussMatt Invitational 12:30 p.m. against Ashland University. Slippery Rock defeated Ashland, 7-3, earlier in the invitational.
